ordinary life

as it happens

Eric Laurier - University of Edinburgh - Teaching

For junior honours students I provide a grounding in Qualitative Methods (not much more than an allotment of research skills). For senior honours I teach in two research electives. In Researching with Media, Julie Cupples and myself, along with students, root around in internet forums, Youtube, indigenous and tabloid media for hidden gems and things left lying around in plain sight. With Dan Swanton, we take a group of students to Berlin for a week to develop their ethnographic craft, exploring streets, community gardens, museums, parks, squats and hipster cafes.

Postgraduate

For MSc & Year 1 PhD Students I teach a seminar-based course Methodolological Debates (a glass house of warm discussion through the winter). I direct the Postgraduate Research in Human Geography and Social Sciences in GeoSciences. I’m lucky enough to supervise a number of PhD students who have worked on, or are working on, intriguing topics like manga, the changing nature of the contemporary museum, trans-national knowledges of townscapes, street performers, Chinese urban public spaces, the experience of travelling in public transport in Chile, walking as methodology, the conservation of ospreys, retirees in Spain using social media and more.

Potential Phd Topics:Ethnomethods of public spaceEthnomethods of mobilityWorkplace studies of creative industriesPractices of suburban neighbouringInfrastructures and their routine repairThe production and/or consumption of digital mediaService encountersThe socio-material organisation of householdsPractical reasoningSocio-logisticsThe relationship between Cavell, Wittgenstein and ethnomethodologyVideo analytic or conversation analytic studies of almost any setting really.